Wi-Fi™ is a wireless local area network (WLAN) technology which enables a device to access the Internet in a frequency band of 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz or 60 GHz.
A WLAN is based on the institute of electrical and electronic engineers (IEEE) 802.11 standard. The wireless next generation standing committee (WNG SC) of IEEE 802.11 is an ad-hoc committee which is worried about the next-generation wireless local area network (WLAN) in the medium to longer term.
IEEE 802.11n has an object of increasing the speed and reliability of a network and extending the coverage of a wireless network. More specifically, IEEE 802.11n supports a high throughput (HT) providing a maximum data rate of 600 Mbps. Furthermore, in order to minimize a transfer error and to optimize a data rate, IEEE 802.11n is based on a multiple inputs and multiple outputs (MIMO) technology in which multiple antennas are used at both ends of a transmission unit and a reception unit.
As the spread of a WLAN is activated and applications using the WLAN are diversified, in the next-generation WLAN system supporting a very high throughput (VHT), IEEE 802.11ac has been newly enacted as the next version of an IEEE 802.11n WLAN system. IEEE 802.11ac supports a data rate of 1 Gbps or more through 80 MHz bandwidth transmission and/or higher bandwidth transmission (e.g., 160 MHz), and mainly operates in a 5 GHz band.
Recently, a need for a new WLAN system for supporting a higher throughput than a data rate supported by IEEE 802.11ac comes to the fore.
The scope of IEEE 802.11ax chiefly discussed in the next-generation WLAN task group called a so-called IEEE 802.11ax or high efficiency (HEW) WLAN includes 1) the improvement of an 802.11 physical (PHY) layer and medium access control (MAC) layer in bands of 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, etc., 2) the improvement of spectrum efficiency and area throughput, 3) the improvement of performance in actual indoor and outdoor environments, such as an environment in which an interference source is present, a dense heterogeneous network environment, and an environment in which a high user load is present and so on.
A scenario chiefly taken into consideration in IEEE 802.11ax is a dense environment in which many access points (APs) and many stations (STAs) are present. In IEEE 802.11ax, the improvement of spectrum efficiency and area throughput is discussed in such a situation. More specifically, there is an interest in the improvement of substantial performance in outdoor environments not greatly taken into consideration in existing WLANs in addition to indoor environments.
In IEEE 802.11ax, there is a great interest in scenarios, such as wireless offices, smart homes, stadiums, hotspots, and buildings/apartments. The improvement of system performance in a dense environment in which many APs and many STAs are present is discussed based on the corresponding scenarios.
In the future, it is expected in IEEE 802.11ax that the improvement of system performance in an overlapping basic service set (OBSS) environment, the improvement of an outdoor environment, cellular offloading, and so on rather than single link performance improvement in a single basic service set (BSS) will be actively discussed. The directivity of such IEEE 802.11ax means that the next-generation WLAN will have a technical scope gradually similar to that of mobile communication. Recently, when considering a situation in which mobile communication and a WLAN technology are discussed together in small cells and direct-to-direct (D2D) communication coverage, it is expected that the technological and business convergence of the next-generation WLAN based on IEEE 802.11ax and mobile communication will be further activated.
On the other hand, IEEE 802.11ad defines performance enhancement for ultra high throughput in the 60 GHz band.
In IEEE 802.11, TGad (Task Group ad) was devoted to develop the standard that uses the unlicensed mmWave spectrum (57-64 GHz) and its revision is being under development.
Advanced antenna technology was introduced to handle a single stream transmission. It showed that maximum data rate around 6.9 Gbps over 2.16 GHz channel bandwidth can be achieved.
In addition, IEEE 802.11ad introduced a new network architecture termed as personal basic service set (PBSS). It combines the distributed nature of connections among the stations with central coordination point known as PBSS control point (PCP). The station that roles as a PCP and has access point capability is termed as PCP/AP.
Also, there is a discussion on IEEE 802.11ay for introducing channel bonding and MIMO technology to IEEE 802.11ad systems.
That is, new task group termed as TGay (task group ay) considers the enhancements on IEEE 802.11ad by considering antenna technology to transmit and receive multiple streams, channel aggregation (aggregation of more than one 2.16 GHz channel bandwidth), multiple accesses over multiple channels, and so on. Its main target operation environments include dense and urban environments.